This invention relates generally to agricultural balers and, in particular, to an improved adjusting apparatus for the packer assembly on such balers.
Typically, agricultural balers have included a bale chamber, a feed chamber located adjacent the bale chamber, a packer assembly for feeding crop material from the feed chamber into the bale chamber, and a plunger reciprocating in the bale chamber for compressing the crop material fed in by the packer assembly. The packer assembly is usually adjustable in order to correct bale shape problems.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,602,365 discloses a mechanism for adjusting a packer assembly. The disclosed adjusting mechanism includes a control link which is threaded at one end for engagement with a trunnion extending between a pair of spaced arms that are connected to the forks of the packer assembly. The other end of the control link is journalled in another trunnion carried on the baler frame, and includes a handle and crank for turning the control link. In order to adjust the penetration of the packer forks into the bale case, the handle and crank are turned in the desired direction to either increase or decrease the effective length of the control link, i.e., the distance between the trunnions. A drawback of the adjusting mechanism disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,602,365 is that the handle and crank are constantly moving up and down with the control link when the baler is operating thereby making adjustment of the packer assembly difficult unless the baler is stopped.
The present invention overcomes this drawback by providing an improved adjusting apparatus which permits easy adjustment of a packer assembly while a baler is operating or when it is stopped.